


Where the Clouds are Far Behind Me

by Arukou



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Halloween, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Spoopy Halloween Fanfic Exchange, Steve Rogers understood that reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 10:31:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5087299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arukou/pseuds/Arukou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avengers throw a Halloween party for some deserving children, but Steve has noticed there's something lurking in the shadows.</p>
<p>-or-</p>
<p>How Bucky Barnes learned he could do good again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Clouds are Far Behind Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [themirrordarkly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themirrordarkly/gifts).



> For the first annual Spoopy Halloween Fic Exchange. [themirrordarkly](http://archiveofourown.org/users/themirrordarkly/pseuds/themirrordarkly) requested spoopy, loopy Halloween fun. Unfortunately, I may have thrown a little too much H/C in there, because that is what I do. Hopefully the fluff makes up for it, yes? *glances shiftily away*

“You sure you don’t want to come down, even just for a little while?” Steve glanced hopefully in the mirror, catching Bucky’s eye in the reflection.

“Don’t think it’s for the best, Steve. Crowd’s too big.” Hunched into his oversized sweatshirt, Bucky looked even thinner than when they’d first found him, though he’d put on a little weight under the influence of Steve’s stubborn puppy eyes.

“You don’t want to watch all the little kids try and pull my tail?”

Bucky smirked at that, his eyes half-lidded. “Why would I want to do that? I pull your tail enough all on my own.”

Steve flushed, but he smiled, too, and turned back to the mirror to finish lining the whiskers and cat nose. The group costume theme had been Tony’s idea, and he was pleased with being the Lion, even if the costume was uncomfortably hot. One last check in the mirror to make sure it was all up to snuff, and then he turned to Bucky. “How do I look?”

“Like a furball,” Bucky muttered, but he stepped into Steve’s space and ran his fingers through the tawny mane. “Personality sure as hell matches, though. All courage and no common sense.”

Steve grinned and leaned forward to give Bucky a quick peck. “I’ll steal some caramel apples for you.”

“You better, punk.” Bucky said, his face softening in a way Steve didn’t get to see enough. He stepped aside and Steve gave him a last jaunty wave before hopping into the elevator. In the common room, a few of the other Avengers were already waiting. Clint was dressed as Toto, Thor as the Scarecrow, and Pepper as Dorothy.

“Looking good, Steve,” Clint said, shooting off a pair of finger guns. “The lionesses’ll be all over you.”

Steve grimaced, reaching up to run a hand through his hair only to be interrupted by the thick mane. “Don’t think they’ll want all the fuzz.”

“Thanks again for doing this, Steve,” Pepper said, offering him a bottle of Coke. “The kids’ll really appreciate it.”

“Sure, Ms. Potts. Anything for them to have a good Halloween.” Steve took the Coke and sipped it, turning in time to catch Natasha’s entrance. She was dressed as Glinda, glittering pink from head to toe, a serene smile on her face. Clint burst out laughing.

“Problem, Barton?” Natasha said, her eyebrow arching in warning.

“I thought you were going as the Wicked Witch.”

“And why would you think that?”

“Because…because, uh…” Clint seemed to realize exactly how far he’d misstepped, but his back-pedal was, if anything, even more inelegant. “Black suits you?” he finished lamely, and gulped when Natasha bared her teeth at him in a razor blade smile.

“Have fun on the couch tonight, dear,” she said, tapping him sharply with her wand.

Tony, Bruce, Sam and Maria all arrived at once. Tony was rather unexpectedly dressed as the Wizard, Bruce as the Tin Man, Maria as the Wicked Witch, and Sam in civvies. “What, no costume?” Steve said, stepping up to bump shoulders teasingly with him.

“The only options left were Flying Monkey or Munchkin, and like hell I’m gonna be either of those. I went with something much cooler.”

Steve raised his eyebrow, looking Sam up and down, but he couldn’t find the slightest hint of a costume. “What exactly was that?”

“Myself, obviously,” Sam said with a charming smile and wink. Steve groaned and moved to side-check him, but Tony was clapping and herding them all around.

“Ok, kiddies,” he said, tapping his cane imperiously. “You know the drill. A lot of these kids are really sick and they deserve to have the best we have to offer them. You ready to give them a night to remember?”

The Avengers all gave a little cheer and made for the elevator, crowding on and trying not to crush any of the more human members with their considerable bulk. Below, their guests were waiting, most of them decked out in superhero costumes, attended by grinning parents and nurses.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Tony cried, stepping forward. He truly was a ring master if ever Steve had seen one. “Thank you all for coming tonight. The Avengers are truly pleased to have you here. We want to give all of you a Halloween to remember, so let’s get to it!”

They all broke off for their respective stations. Steve manned “Pin the tail on the Cat”, and watched Natasha from the corner of his eye as she put her knife skills to work helping kids carve Jack-O-Lanterns.

It wasn’t long before he felt a little itch on the back of his neck, just the slightest tingle of a clammy cool breeze. The first time round, he chalked it up to the rough fabric of the lion hood. It wasn’t anything like his custom-fit helmet, and the weave holding the fibers in place itched and scratched fiercely. But the second time he noticed it, he realized something was off. It was the same kind of tingle he got on the battlefield just before an enemy soldier burst from hiding.

Steve fought to keep from frowning, and instead used the guise of helping one of the kids spin to check his surroundings. There was nothing immediately visibly off. The kids were smiling, the parents were sipping hot apple cider, chatting and looking eternally bone weary, and the Avengers all bustled like worker bees in the hive. Clint had at least three of the pluckier kids hanging on him, and another girl in a wheelchair had absconded with his dog ears. For a fleeting moment, Steve wished they’d all worn coms just in case, but that would have been silly. Unnecessarily paranoid.

He shrugged off his unease and knelt to help a boy with leg braces onto his shoulders. Together they spun and Steve gamely closed his eyes while the other kids gathered around, cheering and directing him. Just as he ran nose-first into the giant black cat, that same chill caressed the back of his neck, sending shivers all the way down his spine.

“Are you cold, Mr. America?” the boy asked, tapping Steve’s cheek.

“I’m fine, Joshua,” he answered, trying to hide his unease. “Can I open my eyes now? How’d we do?”

“Yeah!” Joshua said, and giggled uncontrollably. Steve peeked through his eyelashes, found they’d pinned the cat tail on the inside of one pink ear, and chuckled as well.

“Can’t win ‘em all,” he said and carefully helped Joshua back to the floor.

He saw it then, out of the corner of his eye. A shadow just a shade darker than the atmospheric black of the main atrium. A hint of inky movement in dusty stillness. His breath stilled in his chest and he forced a smile. Something must’ve been too obvious in his face, though, because between one heartbeat and the next, Natasha appeared, smiling brightly down at a little girl dressed as a princess.

“You ready to pin a tail on a cat?”

The girl nodded shyly and accepted the blindfold with her fingers in her mouth. As they stepped back, Natasha leaned into him. “Are we in trouble?” she asked, still smiling diamond bright.

“Not sure. Just…something’s just off. You know? Can you feel it?”

Natasha glanced around the atrium, her eyes completely divorced from her smile, and cataloged with a speed that made Steve’s head spin. “JARVIS would’ve told us if there was someone here who shouldn’t be. Try and relax. If it’s villains, we’ll handle it.” She spun away before Steve could reply, cooing over the princess who’d pinned the tail nearly perfectly.

For a few minutes, the atmosphere eased, as though the air pressure had restabilized in the echoing atrium. But then Steve saw a hairy black shadow very near Clint’s mini-shooting range. The archer was now covered with suction cup darts, and the kids were giggling as they plastered more wherever they’d stick, including the tables, windows, and other guests. The shooting range seemed all but abandoned, leaving a bubble of silence where the hairy creature scuttled and then disappeared into the shadows again.   


Steve could feel gooseflesh on his arms, even with the overwhelming, sweaty heat of his lion costume. Slowly he sidled over to Tony, leading his herd of kids with him. Tony, busy helping kids build simple electronics with heaps of wires, LEDs, and pumpkins, looked up with a mad scientist grin. “Welcome, Lion. What can the Great and Powerful Oz do for you?”

“Well, Oz,” Steve said, trying desperately to find a way to explain what was wrong without the kids catching on, “I think the Flying Monkeys are up to no good.”

Tony raised a quizzical eyebrow and then glanced meaningfully at the kids. Steve shook his head sharply and glanced over to his empty station. The creature was there. He could feel it in the way the air pressed down, the way the shadows shifted. “No,” he said slowly, still staring, “the, uh, the other Flying Monkeys.”   


In the atmospheric Halloween lighting, Tony’s face suddenly shifted. There was something almost gleeful in his manic grin. “Is that so?” he said, and then quickly backed away. Before Steve knew it, there were hairy black arms around him, holding his waist and arms tight.

“Hey there, Lion,” the creature said in his ear, and Steve nearly threw a panicked punch before he recognized that voice, that embrace.

“Buck?” he whispered, but the kids around him were all backing away now, eyes wide and hands at their mouths. It would have been comical if they weren’t so genuinely terrified.

Tony went into the complete throws of theatricality. “The Lion’s been captured by the Flying Monkeys. What’ll we do, kids? How do we save him?”

Slowly the other Avengers gathered round and suddenly Maria swooped in, fingers comically clawed and jaw jutting out with an exaggerated underbite. “I’ve captured the Lion. You’re next Dorothy. You and your little dog. Ahahahaha!”

Quickly, Pepper stepped to the front of the fray, Clint at her side. “The Wicked Witch can be defeated by water. Where do you think we can get some water?” she asked the gaggle of kids. They all exploded into a cacophony of enthusiastic answers until Thor stepped forward, a huge bag slung over his shoulder.

“I have the solution,” he said, voice thundering over all of them. He dropped the bag and opened it to reveal a huge pile of water balloons and super soakers.

“Go on, everyone,” said Pepper, raising her fist. “Save the Lion.”

Steve had just enough time to process how his night would end before the water started flying. He felt one balloon burst on his shoulder, and another on his knee, and then the water guns started, and in a matter of moments, Maria was screaming with all the exaggerated aplomb of an untrained actress. Behind him, Bucky released his hairy, tight grip and slunk back into the shadows as though he’d never been, but not before he was completely soaked. Steve could hear the squelching of the costume fading into the distance.

Steve, too, was drenched. Before the Lion costume had been uncomfortably hot and itchy, but now it was like wearing a sponge. Water saturated every fiber, and it pressed down on him almost as heavily as his armor. Maria finished her melodramatic slink to the floor and a burst of pressurized smoke filled the air. By some trick of Tony’s, she disappeared under the fog, and when it cleared, she was gone.

“Good job, everyone!” Pepper shouted. “You saved the Lion. For that, I think you all deserve a treat.” The kids cheered and Sam and Natasha swooped in, handing out goody bags. Steve saw from the corner of his eye that the adults were getting them too, and what’s more, they weren’t filled with just candy. One tired-eyed mother held her hand to her mouth as she extracted a brand new Stark Phone, and Steve felt his heart swell just a little.

“You’ll have to excuse the Lion kids. He got pretty wet when you were saving him. Can you say goodnight?”

A chorus of young voices shouted goodbye as Steve headed for the elevator, escorted by Tony.

“You coulda told me about the Flying Monkey,” Steve said as he tried in vain to wring out the costume, but even soaked to the bone, he couldn’t fight the smile on his face, and his tone was far from stern.

“It was Bucky’s idea. He thought it would make the performance more dramatic.”

“Well, he’s lucky I didn’t break his ribs,” Steve said, stepping into the elevator.

“Tell him that yourself, Loverboy,” Tony said with a wink and a tap of his cane. The elevator slid shut and Steve was alone, dripping uncomfortably on the carpet. JARVIS had him to his own floor in a jiff, but Bucky was nowhere in sight. Steve followed the wet trail on carpet to the bedroom and past that to the master bath. The shower was running and Bucky’s Flying Monkey costume was draped across the towel bar.

“You need some me time or can I join you?” Steve asked from the door.

Bucky was silent for a moment, but finally he said, “Some me time. That was…it was a lot of people.”

“Ok,” Steve said, and retreated back to their room. He stripped down to his boxers and toweled himself off while he waited. Outside, the Empire State Building was done up in orange and poltergeist green for Halloween, and against the clouded sky it looked sinister and autumnal. Steve shivered as he ruffled his hair, remembering for a moment how the air had gone out of the atrium. For just a handful of minutes, Bucky had been that echoing emptiness from before, that muzzled shadow in the night. But then he’d been himself again, warm and real, albeit still underfed.

“You need it?” Bucky asked, and Steve spun to look at him. He wore his pajama pants and nothing else, and his hair dripped onto his shoulders, poorly dried. Steve sighed and stepped into him, toweling at his head with gentle affection.

“What do you need?” he asked, dodging the question.

“Can we just…” Bucky didn’t finish the thought, but he did gesture to the bed, his metal arm now disproportionately large and awkward against his narrow frame. Steve nodded and guided him over with the towel around his shoulders. With all the warmth Bucky had once shown Steve in the darkest winter nights, when coughs had echoed through their drafty apartment, Steve now tucked him in, curling the blanket around his body until he was nestled deep in the mattress.

“Be right back,” Steve whispered, pressing a kiss to Bucky’s forehead. He dashed to the kitchen, preparing a tray of food and two steaming mugs of mulled cider, and brought the whole lot back to the bed. Popping the legs on the tray, he set it over Bucky’s lap and then climbed in beside him, insinuating an arm behind his back and drawing him close.

“Ok?” Steve asked, fingers tracing the line where his deltoid met his tricep.

“Better,” Bucky said, and settled more of his weight into Steve’s side.

“Lights at twenty percent, JARVIS. And can you put on ‘It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown’?”

“Of course, Captain.”

With his free hand, Steve carefully fed Bucky from the tray of sweets until Bucky gradually returned the favor. In the background, Linus spelled out his hopes and wishes on a white piece of paper, and after a moment, Bucky sighed and his shoulders dropped. “It was good,” he said slowly, glancing up at Steve through half-awed eyes. “They were having fun.”

“They had a lot of fun.”

“And I don’t think I scared ‘em too much.”

“Not once they got to soak you, no. I don’t think so, either.”

Bucky hummed and sipped at his cider, his hand steady and his eyes clear. “It was good,” he said again, and together they sank into the bed, drifting off to the star-picked pumpkin patch and the scent of cinnamon and chocolate.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](http://arukou-arukou.tumblr.com/) for more fannish squeeing and more fanfiction.


End file.
